From: Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret) in the summer of 2022
To: Midshipman Stavridis in the summer of 1972
Dear Jim,
Welcome to the U.S. Naval Academy! You are now another link in an unbreakable chain stretching back well over a hundred years to the founding of the U.S. Naval Academy.
This letter is from a much older version of yourself, coming to you from 50 years in the future, back to you in the summer of 1972, written to a 17-year-old high school graduate walking through the gates at Annapolis from a 66-year-old retired four-star admiral.
It answers the question, “What do you wish you had known at the very beginning?”
My hope is that by writing this brief note, I can offer some experience and perspective as you get underway on the voyage of a lifetime that might be helpful to the young midshipmen of today.
Jim, your class voyage will begin on a hot and humid midsummer day, and you will be nervous and excited, but ready to join the Brigade and ultimately the fleet. The world is a turbulent and unsettled place in the early 1970s, much as it is today in 2022.
Your class of 1976 enters the Academy with the United States still deeply engaged in the seemingly endless war in Vietnam, which will ultimately claim more than 55,000 U.S. lives, although faltering peace talks are now underway in Paris and U.S. troop levels are declining rapidly. By the time you graduate, helicopters will be lifting off the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, a sad symbol of a lost war. A Cold War with the Soviet Union is the other major security concern for the United States.
You arrive in the summer of 1972 just after President Richard Nixon made a dramatic early spring surprise visit to the People’s Republic of China, reestablishing relations and meeting with Mao Zedong. Here in the United States, something called the “Watergate scandal” is about to break, and a well-known film star, Jane Fonda, is touring North Vietnam. Protests surrounding the war are massive, and racial discord touches every element of our national life, including a racial brawl on board an aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, in which 50 sailors will be injured later in the year.
Despite all of that, you should be happy and proud to have been selected to be a midshipmen and don the cloth of our nation. There is much to enjoy, including the profound physical, mental, and moral challenges of life as a midshipman, starting with Plebe Summer runs, endless swimming classes, sailing instruction, boxing and wrestling, rifle and pistol, weight-lifting, and stretching. The Plebe Summer experience is about taking a young person and making them part of something far bigger than just themselves, and you will experience that.
You will enjoy all the things midshipmen have always loved: sports in the yard on a Saturday, football games both home and away, beating Army, including an epic 51-0 win your Youngster year, favorite meals in Bancroft Hall from N* steaks to fresh dairy ice cream, dating the beautiful girls of the mid-Atlantic, going home for the holidays, the Forrestal lectures (at least some of them), concerts (Bruce Springsteen is in your future), and the summer cruises. And you will conversely hate the things that others before you disliked as well: too many parades, onerous discipline, lack of personal freedom, standing in an inspection formation, coming back to Bancroft on a Sunday night knowing it was a hard week ahead.
As the years unfold, a national scandal will lead inexorably to the departure of President Nixon, replaced by a more honest, solid and thoughtful leader, Gerald Ford. By then your class will have sailed around the world on summer cruises, sorted out your choices in service selection, watched the U.S.-Soviet Cold War kick into high gear, and begun to master the basic craft of a naval officer, whether a surface warrior, a combat Marine, a nuclear submarine officer, or a high-flying aviator. You will choose a billet on a destroyer out of San Diego, California.
And so you will graduate and sail into the world. You and your classmates will make your share of history.
In your years of service you will come to know war. Your class begins with a focus on the Cold War and the Soviet Union, but will end up in command decades later in the so-called “forever wars” of Afghanistan and Iraq. The failure of Vietnam will haunt you and your contemporaries until a victory in the Cold War and a successful war in the Persian Gulf will revive the military’s moral in the early 1990s. But beware, for that cycle will swing again, leading to largely failed campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Great nations are like people: they learn from their mistakes and missteps, and their resiliency is rooted in their military ethos. You are now part of all of that.
There are no women in your class at Annapolis, nor will any arrive on campus until after you depart the Academy in the spring of 1976. But you will come to see extraordinary service by women at every rank in the Navy and Marine Corps. Learn from this. Your first command at sea, a destroyer, will have one of the first mixed-gender crews on a warship. Indeed, you will witness many changes in our military in almost every dimension: strategically, technologically, and culturally. Be ready for change when it comes, because it always does.
Your wife and two daughters will bear the brunt of long deployments, many missed family events, and the hardships of constantly moving around the country and the world. But ultimately, they will thrive, for the service life makes a strong marriage stronger, even as it can shatter a weak union. Their love and loyalty will be the most important thing in your life. Cherish them and work to find the best life balance you can. Be your best self when you walk through the door at home, whether from a six month deployment or after a bitter day in the Pentagon.
To the degree you can, let go of personal ambition. Recognize that the three most random things in the Navy are early selection, flag selection, and the awarding of medals. Be a servant leader to those on your team, an honest and loyal subordinate to your boss, and a fierce friend and classmate to your peers. You will fail at this from time to time, and it will be a constant battle for you as it is for many. It is a battle you can and must win.
Never lose your temper. Never raise your voice in anger. The job of an officer is to bring order out of chaos, and the spur of a hot temper only increases chaos, especially in combat.
Three important final thoughts:
First, know that your time at Annapolis and in your career will go by swiftly, like the wake of a destroyer clipping through the sea. There will be moments of real joy and success, and there will also be times of disappointment and failure. Recognize that no midshipman simply sails through these four years without both deep challenge and an ultimate sense of satisfaction in a job well done. Nor does any officer glide seamlessly from rank to rank in the course of her career. Make the most of every moment no matter how challenging or rewarding it may be – because it will go by so swiftly.
Second is the importance of your classmates and peers in the years ahead. Naturally, you will need to draw individually on all your character, intelligence, and energy to succeed; yet the greatest resource you have will be the classmates and peers standing to your right and left. At one point in your career, your fellow ship captains on the waterfront will help your ship through a crisis. They will help you through the hard times and celebrate the good times with you. Ultimately, these shared experiences with peers — friends, shipmates and classmates — will be the most enduring aspect of your four years by the bay and of the long throw of your career.
Finally, the outside world will have a way of edging into everything you are doing at the Academy, and that will be true through much of your career. America in 1972 is divided on many issues, and there are social, cultural and racial disagreements that cut across political and geographic lines, as there are today in 2022. Park those arguments at the iron gates of Annapolis and on the pier as your sail forward in your warship. Focus at the Academy on your studies, alongside your physical and moral fitness. And throughout your career, recognize that as a serving member of the U.S. military your job is to prepare to defend the Constitution of the United States. Every ounce of your energy should be devoted to that task.
You have chosen freely to take on enormous responsibilities to our beloved nation. You will be at the heart of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps for many decades. There is no higher calling. There is no greater honor.
Godspeed and open water in the voyage that lies, Jim
P.S. Unfortunately, your hair will vanish in your early 30s. Cut what remains short, and you’ll look fine.
